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About Kooky and Shaka →Social housing tenants on Palm Island can now apply to buy the house they live in. The Queensland Government opened applications for the Palm Island Rent-to-Buy Home Ownership Scheme on Monday 13 July 2026, in a joint statement from the Minister for Housing and Public Works, Sam O'Connor, and the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, Fiona Simpson.
The scheme starts small. Ten households can take part in the first intake, and the statement says it can grow to as many as 300 homes, depending on demand. A tenant who is accepted keeps paying an amount set at rent level, the payments count toward the price of the house, and when they are complete a 99-year home ownership lease is registered in the buyer's name.
Queensland Government ministerial statement, 13 July 2026.
What opened on 13 July
Palm Island is an Aboriginal community off the coast north of Townsville, where very few households own the home they live in. The statement puts the share of residents who own their home at 1.4 per cent, which Mr O'Connor described as "far below the State's overall rate".
Under the scheme a tenant enters an agreement to buy their home over time. The Palm Island Aboriginal Shire Council administers it, acting as trustee of the land, and the statement says the State is supporting the Council's role through the 2026-27 Budget. It does not give a dollar figure for that support.
The first ten places are a starting point, not a cap fixed for good. The statement describes the scheme as expandable to 300 Council-owned homes if residents take it up. Mr O'Connor called it "a life-changing opportunity" for islanders who have wanted the same chance as other Queenslanders to own a home. Ms Simpson said that "home ownership is a path to self-determination and economic empowerment for our First Peoples."
Related readThe Queensland First Home Owner Grant: who qualifies and how to claimThe Mayor of Palm Island, Alf Lacey, described the launch in the statement as "history in the making".
How the payments become ownership
The Queensland Government's housing pages, which were updated on 10 July 2026 to include the scheme, set out the mechanics. They are simpler than an ordinary purchase, and quite different from it.
- AgreementAn eligible tenant of a detached social house signs a rent-to-buy agreement for that house.
- Monthly paymentsPayments are set at the maximum standard rent for remote housing on the island and count toward the price.
- Ownership leaseAfter about ten years of payments a 99-year home ownership lease is registered and ownership transfers.
The key sentence on the government page is about the amount. Monthly payments equal "the maximum standard rent for remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing stock on Palm Island". In other words a participant pays what the top rent for that kind of home would be, and the money is applied to the purchase instead of being rent. The page gives the period as approximately ten years.
The description does not mention a deposit, and it does not mention a home loan. That is the sharpest contrast with every other route into ownership in Queensland. A first buyer using the State's Boost to Buy scheme needs a deposit of at least 2 per cent and a loan from an approved lender, according to Queensland Treasury. A buyer using the federal 5% Deposit Scheme needs 5 per cent and has to pass a bank's assessment. On Palm Island the test is the tenant's record and capacity to keep paying, which the next section sets out.
Who can apply
The eligibility rules on the government page are specific to the island and to the kind of home.
Four conditions a Palm Island applicant has to meet
The applicant must be a social housing tenant in a detached house, not a unit, duplex or townhouse. They must be an Aboriginal person, or the spouse or former spouse of one, with a historical connection to Palm Island or to the Manbarra or Bwgcolman peoples. And they must show capacity to pay, a positive rental history and no unpaid rent.
Two points follow from those conditions. The first is that the scheme is for sitting tenants buying the home they already occupy. It is not a way for someone to move to the island and buy, and it is not open to the general market.
Related readHelp to Buy gets a third lender as Teachers Mutual Bank signs onThe second is that the property test narrows the field. Only detached houses are included, so tenants of attached dwellings are outside the first intake whatever their record. With ten places and those limits, the households that take part in 2026 will be a small group chosen from a larger number who qualify on paper.
The government page lists two departments for enquiries: the Department of Housing and Public Works, and the Department of Women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships and Multiculturalism.
What a 99-year lease means
Ownership on Palm Island does not take the form of a freehold title of the kind a buyer receives in Townsville or Brisbane. The land is held in trust for the community. What a buyer receives is a 99-year home ownership lease.
The government page explains the difference in one line: the leaseholder gains "exclusive use of the land and ownership of any home on that land", while the trustee keeps the underlying land for the benefit of the community. The house belongs to the buyer. The ground under it stays with the community.
The 99-year lease is not new, and it is not limited to Palm Island. The same page lists the communities where the trustee and the Department of Housing and Public Works have agreed sale prices for social housing: Kowanyama, Lockhart River, Mapoon, Napranum, the Northern Peninsula Area, Palm Island, the Torres Strait excluding Badu and Mer islands, Woorabinda and Yarrabah. In each of them a resident can apply through the trustee to buy a social house under a 99-year lease, and the page says buyers may take out a loan to do it, or to build on vacant land. Money from the sales goes back into housing services in the same community.
Related readWho counts as a first home buyer in Queensland? Six tests comparedWhat Palm Island has, and the others do not, is the rent-to-buy path. The page presents it as an extra option for Palm Island residents alongside the two that apply across the communities: buying under a 99-year lease, and resolving an old lease granted under the Land Holding Act, often called a Katter lease.
The gap the scheme is aimed at
The statement sets four ownership rates side by side, and they explain why the Government chose this community and this method.
Queensland Government ministerial statement, 13 July 2026. "Indigenous households" are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households across Queensland; the Palm Island figure is given for residents.
The step down from the statewide Indigenous rate to the rate in remote and discrete communities is the telling one. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households across Queensland own their homes at a little under 60 per cent of the overall rate. In discrete communities the rate is about a seventh of that again, and on Palm Island it is lower still.
The usual explanations for low first-buyer numbers, prices and deposits, do not account for a gap of that size. On community land the setting is of a different kind. The tenure is a lease from a trustee, not freehold. The homes on offer are social housing, sold at prices agreed between the trustee and the department instead of being set by an open market. A scheme built on rent-level payments sidesteps the deposit and the bank loan, which are the two steps hardest to arrange in that setting.
Eighteen months from promise to applications
The scheme was announced on 22 January 2025, in a statement by the same two ministers, as the Palm Island Home Ownership Scheme. That statement said it met a commitment in the Government's plan for its first 100 days, that up to 300 social homes would be available through it, and that subsidised modular homes would also be delivered to the island.
Related readBoost to Buy: how Queensland's shared equity scheme works for a buyerThe ownership figures have not changed between the two statements: 1.4 per cent for Palm Island, 64 per cent for Queensland and 38 per cent for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households appear in both. What the eighteen months produced is the working detail. The January 2025 statement described an agreement with the Council leading to a 99-year lease. The July 2026 material adds who administers it, how the payments are set, how long they run and who can apply.
One difference in wording is worth noting. The 2025 statement spoke of residents buying Department of Housing social homes; the 2026 statement refers to 300 Council-owned homes. Neither explains the change, and the government page describes the homes simply as social housing.
Mr Lacey's remark in the July statement suggests how the Council sees the wait. The Government, he said, had shown it could "walk side by side" with the community.
What is not yet known
Several things a prospective buyer would want to know are not in the published material. The statement and the government page do not give the price of a house under the scheme, although Palm Island is among the communities where sale prices have been agreed between the trustee and the department. They do not say what happens to the payments already made if a household cannot complete the ten years, who is responsible for repairs and insurance during that period, or whether a participant can pay the balance early.
The timetable for moving beyond ten households is also open. The statement ties expansion to demand, with 300 homes as the outer figure, and names no date for a second intake.
For first home buyers elsewhere in Queensland the scheme changes nothing: the First Home Owner Grant, the duty concessions and the shared equity schemes are as they were. Its significance is in the method. Queensland now has a home ownership program in which the buyer's rent record, not a deposit, is the entry ticket, and the first ten households to complete it will show whether that method can be carried to other communities where a 99-year lease is already on offer.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
